Raping them all over again

I have found the Statesman front page articles about Torrey Green to be extremely offensive. What Torrey did was reprehensible and devastating. He deserves to have the “book thrown at him” and get him off the streets, or at least into a treatment program.

But what the Statesman is doing is not much better – printing lurid details from each girl’s testimony with their initials at the top. If I was one of those girls, I would feel like I was being raped all over again. It’s bad enough having to give the testimony in court, in front of a small group, in order to see that justice is done, but then to have all those details broadcast to thousands of your friends and fellow students on campus would be agonizing. The least that should have been done is to write “victim #1” and “victim #2” etc. instead of their initials. In reality, the writer should have simply summed up the situation and results, but not gone into sensational and shocking detail.

Writers and editors may feel they have a “right” to publish all those details, but it is not ethical nor kind. And it does not benefit the reader either. How long does it take to get those images out of your mind after reading it? A little common sense judgment would have been wise.

Lana Achribald works for Utah State University. Her statements are her own.